In May 2019, Nidhi Goyal took on the role of the AWID board President after supporting the work of the organisation as a board member, and a member of the International Planning Committee of the 13th International AWID Forum.

New Board member Nidhi Goyal reflects on her journey as a disabled feminist and activist from India. 

The recent Zika outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean has highlighted some areas where different sectors of the global feminist movement need to deepen reflection and dialogue about how to develop tactics and strategies for moving our collective rights and justice agendas forward.

As Sonya Renee’s poetic words washed over a room of women at the 13th International AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil, I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

As disability scholar and activist, Martina Shabram wrote in a recent article about how Zika reveals our societies’ prejudice about disability, “too often, the narrative surrounding microcephaly relies on familiar – and disturbing – assumptions about what kind of lives are worth living.”

As part of the AWID Forum process, AWID, CREA, the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), and RESURJ held a second webinar on Bodily Integrity and Freedoms, a conversation between Disability, Intersex and Trans Activists. The aim of this second session was to bring together perspectives from within different movements to strengthen the work we do across them.

FRIDAY FILE - In December 2012 the United States Senate failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Esmé Grant[i] from the United States International Council on Disabilities (USICD) talked to AWID about why it failed and how they are committed to ensuring the CRPD will be ratified in 2013.

By Rochelle Jones

AWID spoke to Maria Veronica Reina, Executive Director of Global Partnership for Disability and Development to examine how women with disability are faring in terms of economic rights.

Launched in 2008, the mission of Vie Féminine et Handicap is to fight against poverty among women living with disability in Senegal and globally, but especially across the African continent.

Ruth Acheinegeh is a “young woman in her early thirties, full of energy and cheerfulness in her encounters with those around her and with one leg affected by polio.” She created the North West Association for Women with Disabilities, the first ever women’s group in Bamenda focusing only on women’s issues.